We need to move away from printed documents. Not to save the forests and not to save on money, though those are nice benefits. We need to evolve beyond what we’ve always done because paper documents are so dumb, so inflexible, so 20th Century. We can do better. Why do we cram as many sections or details as possible on a sheet? We do this to save paper, to go from 40 sheets to 36, to print a little less. We arrange our drawings the way we do to save money thanks to this equation: money not spent = cost/sheet x number of sheets eliminated by crowding drawings onto fewer sheets x number of sets. It’s not to make the documents more legible. Or make them easier to search. Or make using them more convenient. It’s not to increase utility but to cut corners and save money. Well if the goal is to save money, let’s just not print anything.

Digital over Paper Documents

I can hear your screams. On site the contractor needs those big sets! Individual subcontractors only want individual sheets! We’ve always done it this way and it works… Excuse, excuse, excuse. No. Have you ever asked to have the contractor build from only digital documents? Is the framer really carrying that 24 x 36 sheet set up to the roof with him? No. Those giant sets are huge and cumbersome and hard to deal with. All digital has issues, but we architects are problem solvers. Let’s solve this problem.

Imagine a typical construction site in the United States. What percentage of the workers on site has a smart phone in his pocket? Or a tablet at home? What about the project supervisors? Whatever the percentage (I’m sure it’s very high), the point is that all the tech needed to go paperless on site is probably already on site. It’s just being used to check Facebook during lunch, text during a breather, or answer a phone call about another project. The more digital we go on site, the more valuable all our BIM data becomes. We have smart, live models in our offices; we should have smart, live data (models, drawings, whatever) on site. Whatever the size of the project.

For some thoughts on making smarter digital documents (specifically PDFs), read these posts I wrote on BIM Engine. For other thoughts on going to digital instruments of service, check out these posts. To hasten the switch to all digital work, follow Shoegnome on Facebook and Twitter. And while you’re at it, the RSS feed is a great way to never miss anything either.